Ephraim Hardcastle

BORIS Johnson pointedly ignored the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg and ITN’s Robert Peston after his EU trade speech yesterday, only taking questions from them after he’d singled out representatives of the print media and was hurriedly wrapping up the Q& A session. Was it revenge for the BBC and ITN’s refusal to broadcast his Brexit address to the nation on Friday night? It didn’t require the skill of Sherlock Holmes to find the fingerprints of Rasputin- like adviser Dominic Cummings.

MORE Downing Street ructions with Lobby correspondents walking out before a briefing after selected titles including the Mirror, Evening Standard and Huffington Post were excluded. Journalists from the Mail, BBC, ITV, Sky and Financial Times walked out in solidarity with their banned colleagues. Another chapter in Cummings’s war with the Lobby?

JACOB Rees- Mogg, with three brace of children, might be tempted to move to 20- bedroom Ston Easton Park, a Georgian pile only a short drive from his current Somerset abode. It was Moggy’s childhood home and is for sale for £ 9.5million. This should be well in Jacob’s price range. His fortune is estimated between £ 55million and £ 150million.

DAISY Waugh, pictured, is finally following in the footsteps of grandfather Evelyn, writing In the Crypt with a Candlestick, a comic novel based on his Brideshead Revisited. She says: ‘ Damn, if you can’t beat them, join them.’ But Daisy,

52, admitting that Evelyn’s royalties have kept the family ‘ in shoes and Botox for decades’, frets that his copyright runs out in 2036. ‘ I’ll be 69,’ she adds forlornly.

AUSTRALIAN tennis legend John Newcombe offers his services after hearing that Kate regularly trounces William on the court. ‘ I would coach Prince William for nothing,’ he says. ‘ I’m sure I can give William some tips on how to beat Kate. We can have a chat at Wimbledon.’

BBC rugby commentator Brian Moore refers to England forward Maro Itoje’s schooling during Sunday’s defeat to France. ‘ They probably don’t teach that at Harrow,’ he said sarcastically when Itoje was caught offside. The son of Nigerian parents, Itoje won a scholarship to Harrow. Why was Moore’s class- based jibe considered acceptable by the BBC?

THE BBC’S superannuated royal correspondent Jennie Bond tells a documentary about the Ritz Hotel how she sought information about the Queen Mother by taking her staff for tea at the QM’s favourite hotel. ‘ I felt that my lovely ladies- in- waiting might be indiscreet,’ she says. ‘ I have to tell you that generally they were not.’ Hope you got a receipt Jennie!

RESEARCHING toilets for his Chelsea pub the Fox and Pheasant, warbler James Blunt was disturbed taking photographs in a Berlin gents. ‘ Somewhere,’ he says, ‘ someone is relaying the story about meeting James Blunt and he’s a urinal fetishist.’ All cisterns go, James.

Email: john. mcentee@ dailymail. co. uk